Chinese Wind Turbine Company Convicted of Stealing Trade Secrets

ASMC of Massachusetts won their court case against a Chinese wind turbine manufacturer in January and was awarded nearly $60 million in restitution payments. Sinovel Wind Group was convicted of conspiracy, theft of trade secrets and wire fraud by a federal jury for conspiring with former AMSC engineer Dejan Karabasevic to steal ASMC's source code for software crucial to regulating the flow of electricity from the turbines to the electrical grids. They were hit with an additional $1.5 million dollar fine, which is the maximum allowed by law, on July 6, 2018 in federal court.

ASMC which relied on Sinovel for 70% of their revenue was immediately fired from all contracts with the Chinese company after the theft of intellectual property. They had to shutter one field office and scale back operations in another. This loss of income caused the American company to fire 700 workers as their stock price tanked by 50% in one day. American prosecutors are touting this as a win because Sinovel's total assets dropped from $3.4 billion to $1 billion. I fail to see this rosy ending as Sinovel is still making wind turbines within China and ASMC lost $1.1 billion in value. That's like getting back $60 when someone steals $1,100 from you.

During the trial, prosecutors provided evidence of how in 2011 a disgruntled AMSC engineer, Dejan Karabasevic, who was based in Austria, conspired with two Sinovel officials, Su Liying and Zhao Haichun, to steal AMSC’s copyrighted information and trade secrets to produce wind turbines and retrofit existing wind turbines. A jury learned that Karabasevic downloaded the source code for AMSC software needed to operate its wind turbines from a server located at AMSC’s Middleton office. Karabasevic, who lives in Serbia, and Su and Zhao, both of whom live in China, have been charged with the same crimes but their countries are not extraditing them to the U.S., O’Shea said.

You can never get the Market cap for a stock ever. The Market Cap is inflated. It's the most recent purchases X total volume. If you tried to sell the total volume at once, the price would crash and you'd get almost nothing. Claiming Market Cap represents some kind of wealth is stretching it beyond it's limits. It is a metric for relative comparisons of companies only.

So an American court awarded damaged against a Chinese company, great now you can take that ruling deliver it to a Chinese judge and see how far that gets you, I am not even sure they would wait for you to leave the room before they threw it in the garbage. They will never see a dime of that money, and none of the people involved will have any legal repercussions.

Id be happy with $60...someone stole 12k from me and I will never see a dime of it. Why? Because every time we find them and serve them notice of suit they skip town and the courts make us start all over again...

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Had the same done to me and experienced the same thing with the court system. I wish I had the gas money back from riding to the courthouse and meeting the DA in another town every 2 -3 months over the course of 3+ years.

Had the same done to me and experienced the same thing with the court system. I wish I had the gas money back from riding to the courthouse and meeting the DA in another town every 2 -3 months over the course of 3+ years.

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Thankfully I dont have to do that. I just paid a lawyer 40% of whatever he could recover and its now his problem. So far he has 40% of $0.00.

Florian Kremslehner, an attorney for American Superconductor, said there is evidence that Sinovel wooed Karabasevic by offering him an apartment, a five-year contract at twice his current pay, and “all the human contact’’ he wanted, “in particular, female co-workers.’’

I honestly wonder what kind of cars/mileage, processors, refrigerators, solar panels, wind turbines, operating systems, etc, that we would have today if we didn't have silly patents holding back innovation of making the best products possible. Elon Musk did something good for once by releasing some of their patents to the public instead of keeping it locked down or charging ridiculous amounts for others to use their inventions. Imagine if the inventor of the polio vaccine didn't give his invention to the world for free and instead patented it and then marked it up 5000% and then slowly spike it even further every few years like current Big Pharma does. Polio wouldn't be nearly eradicated as it is today. This applies to nearly every field in existence today.

I honestly wonder what kind of cars/mileage, processors, refrigerators, solar panels, wind turbines, operating systems, etc, that we would have today if we didn't have silly patents holding back innovation of making the best products possible.

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You wouldn't have any of them.

Patents were created to help eliminate guild trade secrets that where holding back innovation. Before patents, guild's trade secrets where kept, sometimes for centuries, by dark means: revealing one ran a good chance of getting you killed, and would certainly drive you out of the profession.

In exchange for revealing these secrets to the public, the holders of them are given a temporary monopoly on them. Other innovators can improve on a patented invention even while the patent is in force: they can't use the patented invention or their improved version, but then, the patent holder can't use the improved version either, so usually the two parties wind up cross-licensing.

This cross-licensing actually drives innovations in the semi-conductor industry: companies push their employe4es to innovate sot hat they have patent "chips" to trade with their peers. All of the major semiconductor manufactures have extensive patent cross-licensing deals with their peers: they have to, because no one company has the talent or the money to push the state of the art as fast as they all have. Sometimes, though, a company goes "old school" and maintains a technology as a trade secret for years, as Intel did with important details of it's critical Chemical-Mechanical Polishing (CMP) planarization processes.

TL;DR: the patent system has been way better for innovation than the trade secret regime it replaced.

Disclaimer: I am a named inventor on over 50 issued US patents from back in my days as an engineer, and currently conduct patent prosecution (i.e., get people patents on their inventions) before the USPTO.

TL;DR: the patent system has been way better for innovation than the trade secret regime it replaced.

Disclaimer: I am a named inventor on over 50 issued US patents from back in my days as an engineer, and currently conduct patent prosecution (i.e., get people patents on their inventions) before the USPTO.

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Except its friggen expensive to get a patent and most individuals cant afford it (and im not just talking about the fees).

Except its friggen expensive to get a patent and most individuals cant afford it (and im not just talking about the fees).

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AN inventor can file for a utility patent (the kind most patent people think of) for $430 in filing and examination fees if qualified as a micro entity. If the application is determined to be patentable, the issue fee is $250 for a micro entity.
Once the patent issues, there are maintenance fees due to keep it in force at 3.5 years ($400), 7.5 years ($900), and 11.5 years ($1850), again, for a micro entity.

Or If you just want a year of protection while you look for investors, file a provisional patent application for $70.